Mary Prince and Louis Asa

Student: Colin McCann

Class: Humanities

Instructor: Dr. Trutor

Date: 2/28/2014

Mary Prince Essay

Mary Prince and Louis Asa-Asa’s narratives shows how African slaves in eighteenth-century Britain could use their memory and experience’s to tell of their harsh and brutal lives in order to help the regular people of Britain understand their humanity and their suffering as slaves. Reading these narratives enabled white British people not only to recognize the personhood and humanity of the African British slave but also to empathize and imagine what a typical slave endures as well as allowing them to be viewed as thinking, rational beings instead of just a mindless piece of property. Mary Prince became the first woman to present an anti-slavery petition to the English Parliament. She was also the first black woman to write and publish an autobiography.  Louis Asa-Asa’s story was added along with Mary Prince’s narrative because it provided a different insight into the treatment and life as a slave in their native country before ever being shipped across seas to Europe or the West Indies. The book was a key part of the anti-slavery movement in England. It allowed the people of Britain to become aware of what was really going on in the British colonies, although the Slavery had been banned in England by the time the book was published, slavery still continued on the plantations in the English colonies.

Mary Prince was born in Bermuda, in 1788. When she was a child, she was sold to a Captain Williams, who gave her to his granddaughter Betsey. When Williams's wife died, he sold her to Captain I—.  Captain I— after a while sold her to Mr. D—, who put her to work in the salt ponds of the Turksish Islands.  After working in the salt ponds Prince was then sold to John Wood and brought to Antigua to work in Johns woods home. Prince then joined a local Moravian Church in 1817. There she met her husband named Daniel James who was a free man. Woods then took Prince to England in 1828. There Prince then met with the Aldermanbury office of Anti-Slavery because Woods would not sell her freedom so she could return to her husband who was still in Antigua without being captured and sold again. The Anti-Slavery office petitioned Parliament to force Woods to grant her freedom. Unfortunately for Prince the petition was halted by Wood's who left to go back Antigua before it was brought to a public hearing. Later, Prince was brought to the home of Thomas Pringle as a servant 1829. When she was with the Pringles, she told her story to Susanna Moodie, Who was a writer and a member of the English anti-slavery movement. In 1831 Tomas Pringle published Prince's Story. Prince’s story was a hit and later that year 3 editions were printed. Another slave by the name of Louis Asa-Asa told a different story than that of Mary Prince. Louis’s story starts in a country called Bycla. In his story Louis and his family were living in that same village and quite happy at that. When the people he refers to as the Adinyes come to his village, they burn everything and start murdering and capturing people. Louis and some of his relatives and neighbors managed to run away into the woods. After a while the Adinyes came back and managed to capture Louis. He was then sold many times for random objects and money before reaching the coast where he is sold to the Some English slavers. Later in his story he tells of how he wish the king of England knew all he went through, so that he may put an end to the atrocities that occur to the average slave.